Bandyopadhyay feels that addressing someone, as ABCD is a bit derogatory as it implies that one is confused about his or her roots. She prefers to believe that the confusion for those living here is about adopting a certain lifestyle, not about one’s roots.

Strolling down the streets of Jackson Heights, Queens is like walking through a mini South Asia. Indian and Pakistani restaurants dot the streets. The streets signs are in both Hindi and English. Tag Heuer Bollywood stars tote products on billboards. Mannequins in clothing stores are draped in saris.

Sultana Tahrin, a 45-year-old housewife originally from Bangladesh, likes to bring her 10-year-old daughter, Maliha, to the stores that offer traditional jewelry, and shoes so she can foster her daughter’s interest in her native land and lessen the pull of American culture.

“I speak with my daughter in Bengali at home,” Tahrin said. “This way she will grow up in America knowing her native language as well.”

Among these restaurants is a Pakistani eatery where Rooshna Javed, a Pakistani housewife, also works there as a cashier.

Javed, of Woodside, Queens moved to New York 12 years ago. She said she has a 20-year-old daughter who wants to date outside of her culture, which she forbids. In fact, she is not allowed to date at all and would be immediately sent back to Pakistan for an arranged marriage if she disobeys.

“My daughter has made it clear to me that she does not want to marry a Pakistani man,” said Javed. “She feels that a Pakistani man will not be accepting of her western clothing and lifestyle and she will find it difficult to embrace a more conservative culture after having lived in New York for so long.”

Javed feels the threats by her husband and herself have managed to keep her daughter “in control.” They get into many arguments over dating and marriage, but Javed’s husband has made the rules clear, as traditionally done so by the men of the house in a typical Pakistani household.

However, a lot of Desis living in the United States feel more American than their parents would like to think.

Mitch Thakron came to California from India when he was six-years-old and no longer feels much like an Indian. He has embraced the American Way from the food to the clothing, but deep inside there is a place that is still very much connected to India.

“It’s the spiritual part about my culture that I want to internalize,” Thakron said. “I rebelled against it earlier, but I respect it now. I don’t think ABCD (American Born Confused Desis) applies to me. If I am going to be judged by my own people for living here, I don’t care,” he said.

Culturally there exists a vast difference between America and South Asia. In the latter region, advertisements often depict women as cooking, cleaning and serving food to their husbands. “Good housewives” are mostly shown covered from head to toe. Women are rarely shown working in the corporate world.

When Desi children are raised in America, they are exposed to a different, progressive media, and this fuels the perception gap between them and their parents. Anything too “American” is inherently in conflict with something too non Desi.

Ali Nobil Ahmad, teaches modern history at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan. He has published articles and chapters on gender, sexuality and migrant labour. Nobil said there can be a discrepancy in aspirations between generations of Pakistani or Indian Origin.

“It stems from having a different set of experiences and priorities,” said Nobil, “However, all the evidence is that generational ‘culture clash’ is a bit simplistic and assumes that the parents themselves do not evolve in the new cultural context. Most immigrant parents become more liberal over time, and their expectations are different for their first, second and third offspring.”

Ammar Khalid, 26, is an Anthropology student at Columbia University from Multan, Pakistan. After having interacted with Desis in the US, he feels the term ‘ABCD’ is irrelevant precisely because a Desi subculture exists in America now. He feels there is some truth to the fact that people who grow up in the United States mediate between conflicting values or ideals.

Ammar Khalid, a Pakistani student studying Anthropology at Columbia University. feels the term 'American Born Confused Desis is has become irrelevant. Photo Mina Sohail

“I think this idea that people who grow up here are ‘confused’ comes from the assumption that the West is modern and the East traditional, and thus people living here are exposed to conflicting values which they find difficult to reconcile,” said Khalid.

But Khalid questions how their confusion is different from one’s confusion having lived and grown up in Pakistan. He feels the distinctions between ‘modern’ and ‘traditional,’ are conflicting cultural paradigms that people are caught between.

A similar view is that of Hafsa Rahman, a 27-year-old medical student at St. George’s University in Michigan. She moved to the United States with her parents from Karachi, Pakistan when she was eight years old.

“It is more difficult to understand which culture one belongs to as that is the primary basis of confusion,” said Rahman, “I think Desi kids in general are confused in their teen and adolescent years but as they get older they learn to form their own diaspora by combining aspects of their native and present cultures.”

Rahman said she and her parents grew up in different cultures, but the difference of opinion is not merely because of a cultural gap, but more so the current times and its influences.

Arabic on business awnings and windows are a regular sight on the two-block stretch of Steinway Street, home to many halal meat shops, hookah bars, doctor's offices, traditional Arab clothing shops and more. Photo by Joann Pan

Smoke whirled up from a corner cart, as fresh halal meat was pressed down against hot grates, melding with the sweet aroma of fruit tobacco coming out the open-air hookah bars lining Steinway Street near Astoria Boulevard in Astoria, Queens. Arabic covered business awnings and windows of the ethnic clothing shops, mosque and eateries. This neighborhood is casually known as Little Egypt. Locals know this is where to find the best Middle Eastern food in town.

But these are the same restaurants, cafes, hookah bars and shops the police sought out clues after the 9/11 attacks and continue to be monitored by the NYPD in search of terrorists, according to residents and an investigative report by the Associated Press. They say plainclothes police officers listen to their conversations in cafes, look over community center message boards, and take photos of these businesses.

In multiple press accounts Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has denied allegations of the alleged spy unit, but Muslim advocacy leaders have had enough and are now taking a stand against racial and religious profiling.

“The proof is there, we don’t need to prove anything,” said Linda Sarsour, director of the Arab Americans Association of New York (AAANY) said . “I think that the NYPD is so counterproductive to what they are trying to do because what they are trying to do supposedly is to keep us safe.”

Police would not return requests for comment on this story.

For Sarsour, the targeting of ethnic neighborhoods is a very real intrusion into the lives of Muslim Americans. She said Muslim residents are too paranoid to come out of their homes on a regular basis and take advantage of the social services the AAANY provides.

“People don’t feel free to talk about things anymore,” Sarsour said about Arab Americans, who she said are generally very politically opinionated but now hold back for fear of being thought a terrorist. “People don’t want to share their views. It is creating strife between groups.”

But Fadi Darwich, 26, from Jersey City, N.J., whose family operates a new Lebanese eatery in Astoria, does not feel intimidated by extra surveillance on the Muslim community.

“I don’t think it will affect the business,” Darwich said, of his customers that about half come from the local Muslim community and those who just come solely for the food. “They are targeting the area because there are Muslims. There should be privacy. But I am with the police if they can find something wrong.”

Jessica Zoppolo, 23, an Astoria resident who frequents this area to dine believes that nationality-specific investigations can be harmful to the neighborhood.

“It’s wrong to assume all the businesses on Steinway Street have some relation to terrorism,” she said. “It’s unfortunate when these investigations cause businesses to shut down… for fear of being blamed for something they are not a part of.”

A rally in Foley Square was the first grassroots action of this movement moving forward.

“There was a lot of fear, a lot of controversy,” Sarsour said. “People knew their pictures were going to be taken, they were doing to be in the media, potentially, NYPD looks at those videos and who they are already following.”

This is a step that Muslim New Yorkers must take in their fight to stop racial and religiously profiling, Sarsour said.

Leaders of this movement are currently looking at its legal options as well as initiating education workshops at college campuses, organizing future community action and getting people to talk about these issues through social media.

“One of the things that was missing in the past was we weren’t really, our entire community wasn’t necessarily involved,” Sarsour said. “We want people on social media to talk about it. In hopes, there will be online and petitions circulating.”

The next step for the coalition is to ask the NYPD to set up an oversight commission—an organization completely independent from the police department that can provide objective insight to what is going on and to prevent further damage.

The coalition against the racial and religious targeting of Muslims also wants to amend the training of police officers and the removal of anti-Islamic materials and “entire curriculums based on hate [conveying] Islam as a religion based on violence,” said Sarsour.

Jack, left, and Barbara Solomon stand along Crescent Street in Queens, waiting for their son Bill, a first-time marathoner at age 50. Photo by Chris Palmer

Standing in the shadow of the 59th Street Bridge in Queens, Jack and Barbara Solomon clapped thundersticks and danced to live music, soaking in the vibrant atmosphere of the ING New York City Marathon while waiting for their son Bill to run up Crescent Street.

“This is fabulous,” Jack said.

“It’s the experience of a lifetime,” said Barbara.

The pair stood among a modest but growing crowd this morning, cheering on wheelchair competitors and the earliest female runners before the race reached fever pitch across the river in Manhattan.

“We’re just caught up in the excitement,” Barbara said.

And they had good reason to be.

The Solomons said their son, who turned 50 this year, was running in his first marathon. They drove into the city from their home in Lido Beach, Long Island to catch a glimpse of him passing by in Queens. They planned to drive over to Central Park later in the afternoon to watch him cross the finish line.

“That will be a challenge,” Jack said with a smile.

The real challenge was keeping their nerve while waiting for their son to run by. Barbara said they have watched their niece, an eight-time marathon runner, compete in this race before. But there was a different sense of anxiety waiting for her son, and she noted that he ran into some difficulties while training.

“I’m worried about his knees,” she said.

Despite her concerns, though, both she and Jack expressed a great deal of pride in their first-time marathoner. They said he had raised several thousand dollars for Team in Training, a national fundraiser for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and even with his sore knees and relative lack of experience in competitive running, they had no doubt he would cross the finish line in Central Park.

Students at Our Lady’s Catholic Academy in South Ozone Park, Queens are closing their “old-fashioned” textbooks and notebooks as they enter the touch-screen world of Apple for assignments, note taking and tutorials.

“I’m so emotional,” said Katherine Duarte, 11, of South Ozone Park. “I think I’m going to be able to learn a lot more things than with a regular book because it’s interactive.”

Thirty-one students of Ricky Sosa’s sixth-grade class traded in their Mead paper notebooks for iPads yesterday, thanks to a $10,000 grant from the Alive in Hope Foundation and Futures in Education. Additional funding was acquired through school fundraisers, increased enrollment and cost savings from the discontinued use of paper textbooks.

Principal Kevin Coyne, 32, of Rockaway Park, said this year’s sixth grade class had the greatest gain in standardized test scores, especially in the reading area. As a result, he decided to write a grant to the Alive in Hope Foundation to help students move forward with a new approach.

“Education is limited by traditional technology,” Coyne said. “With an iPad, children can access vocabulary by tapping on a word and instantly seeing the definition or explore geography with 3-D maps.”

Coyne added that with the use of an iPad, the child becomes more active in effective learning. He said that while many think Catholic schools are “stuck in the 20th century,” OLCA is breaking boundaries by becoming the first school in the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens to introduce iPads to students.

“I wanted to do this not because it’s the ‘cool thing’ but because this is going to be a tool that will maximize a student’s learning experience,” he said. “We’re bringing kids to the present.”

Priscilla Uy of Futures in Education, an organization providing tuition assistance and program support to students of Catholic schools in Brooklyn and Queens, said the introduction of the iPad in to the classroom is priceless.

“It’s going to help kids keep up with the world and be up-to-date with technology,” said Uy, 30, of Oakwood, Staten Island. “It’s a great gift of education. We’re giving a lot of kids in this neighborhood an opportunity they might not otherwise have.”

Children in Sosa’s class will ditch their heavy textbooks and opt for iBooks, which will enable them to highlight, take notes and even look up words in a built-in dictionary. The iPad even has the ability to read back to them.

“These students have the tools right in front of them,” said Sosa, 26, of Kew Garden Hills. “You’re presenting the information and letting them explore it themselves.”

However, there will be restrictions as to what his students can access. Educational-based applications in geography, science, math and anatomy are all acceptable but students do not have access to the Apple App Store and the iPads can only be used in the classroom.

Sosa said the class isn’t completely exiling books, pens and notebooks from the classroom, but that the iPad is simply an additional tool that will be integrated in the curriculum to help students on a more personal level.

“If a student has a question about a word or something they don’t understand, they have the ability to go on Google and look it up themselves,” Sosa said. “We do the research together and learn together.”

Ananda Persaud, 40, mother of 11-year-old Kayla, who received an iPad today, has mixed feelings toward the new technology being introduced to her daughter.

“I’m a little wary because I wonder, what about manuals and textbooks,” said the mother of three from Ozone Park. “But my kids know a lot about technology, they even teach me, so I’m supportive.

Sebastian Araya, 11, of South Ozone Park, admitted he would probably take fewer notes with a pen and paper but that the iPad would still do more good than harm for him.

“I need more help in math, so I can use the iPad to play math games,” Araya said. “It’s different because I’m learning in a fun way.”

Shortly before lunchtime, other students peeked into Sosa’s classroom to witness their friends turning a new page in their school’s history with the simple touch of a finger.

Pedestrians walk along 37th Avenue between 84th Street and 85th Street in Jackson Heights, Queens, passing a vacant lot where Tom's Shoe Repair burned down in February. Thomas Kourakos opened the shop in 1956 and stayed in the neighborhood as a shift in demographics reshaped the community. Photo by Chelsia Marcius

Thomas Kourakos remembers the morning his shoe shop caught fire and his career as a cobbler came to an abrupt end. On Feb. 13, he lost his finisher, stitcher, nibbler and patching machine — tools he used for more than 40 years to mend the soles of residents in Jackson Heights.

In those four decades, Kourakos, 83, watched from his doorstep — now a dusty pile of charred brick and melted mortar — as the neighborhood along 37th Avenue adapted, adjusted and reinvented itself.

He saw Fresco Tortillas, The Eastern World Travel Agency and Primos Discount move in across the street after Italian and Irish shopkeepers moved out. Kourakos knew the Luigi family, who ran a local pizza joint on the corner of 37th Avenue and 84th Street. Now it is a Mexican restaurant called Margarita’s.

But while the constant flux of different ethnicities might be a sore spot for some residents, Kourakos said it is the immigrants who have revived the community — returning Jackson Heights to the vibrant, competitive marketplace of the past.

“Business is better than it was 30 years ago,” Kourakos said, the wiry bristles of his mustache spreading into a lopsided smile. He is the son of a cobbler from Greece and a New York native. “Immigrants brought something to the neighborhood. They renovated and opened up beautiful stores. Thirty-seventh lost its luster 10 years ago. Now it’s coming back.”

Before, during and after Tom’s Shoe Repair, which Kourakos opened in 1956 and closed after the fire, the area has been a merchant melting pot. And despite the cultural clash, small businesses in the commercial heart of Jackson Heights, Queens, continue to coexist and even thrive.

Daniel Karatzas, author of “Jackson Heights: A Garden in the City,” said these demographic shifts take root in the early 20th century, when former real-estate giant Queensboro Corporation introduced cooperative housing, or “co-ops,” to the area.

The company offered rental tenants an attractive alternative to settling in the suburbs. But chic co-ops came with a price: a neighborhood now “physically distinct and more affluent than the surrounding area,” Karatzas said, a place for only the wealthy and well-to-do.

After the Great Depression and World War II, rapid housing development came to a halt and high-end merchants left. But more people continued to call Jackson Heights home. In the 1960s, Cubans and Koreans moved to the neighborhood, and 10 years later immigrants from South Asia followed.

Karatzas said these waves coincided with the recession of the 1970s, creating a host of problems that led to more trash, more crime and a more distinct ethnic divide.

Even into the 1980s, Kourakos said he kept his prices low to ease the financial burden on his family.

He sold his house in Long Island and moved to Jackson Heights with his wife Olga, who died in 2008. They lived in an apartment just a few blocks from his store to cut out the cost of a car.

And Kourakos still fixed a stiletto or kitten heel for what he considered next to nothing; throughout his career, his prices ranged from 75 cents to $7, depending on the decade. He said he considered customers family, and the last thing he’d do was shortchange a family member.

Carol Blum, 67, a Jackson Heights resident since 1979, visited the cobbler whenever she needed her children’s tennis shoes resoled or a high heel mended.

“It seemed like it was always there,” said Blum, whose apartment is adjacent to the shoe shop. “Things started to change a bit around Tom. But he was a fixture, and you really didn’t think about him; he was just part of it, and you took it for granted that he was here.”

Blum evacuated her building the day a boiler set the whole lot ablaze. She stood outside with a group people — some who held their animals close, others with their robes wrapped tightly around them. Blum said all stared at the fire from across the street and watched the smoke rise.

Kourakos said he first noticed the neighborhood change in the 1960s. Business executives, who lived in the Roosevelt Terrace co-op and often came in for a quick polish, stopped coming. The constant flow of customers, which he likened to that of a grocery store’s, began to ebb.

“The people making big money moved out, and they were the ones who could have their boots fixed,” he said. “Those that couldn’t afford it wore their shoes down. But I was there all those years and never had a problem with them. Even though they were immigrants, they were able to do business. I have nothing against the ones coming in now.”

Kourakos doesn’t keep in touch with immigrant shop keepers from his lot — people such as the Russian liquor seller and the Peruvian couple who sold party favors at their store, Lolita’s. Nor does he call customers like Blum. The flames consumed everything, including his cash register, where he kept all of their phone numbers.

As he talked of the fire, he gripped a cup of coffee with his thick, fleshy hands. Kourakos said he likes his coffee without too much milk; he often dumped out coffee customers brought him if it didn’t taste like coffee. He said he’s fussy like that, which is why he preferred to work alone.

Solid-green wooden panels now separate the lot of Tom’s Shoe Repair from the street. A demolition company’s advertisement hangs on the makeshift wall. Posters with the words “grand opening” invite passersby to visit new stores — the stores of those who relocated after the fire. Blum said the others “were too young to retire and (Kourakos) was too old to start over.”

As Jackson Heights continues to adapt, adjust and reinvent, Kourakos said he wishes he could feel like a part of it all again.

“You get pleasure out of life certain times, certain hours, certain seconds,” he said. “You know what the old song is? It’s ‘I Can Dream, Can’t I?’ “

Rats now thrive in rubbish piles throughout Jackson Heights, Queens, after job cuts in May that slashed 75 percent of the city's exterminator workforce. Photo by Chelsia Marcius

Pulling out an old badge with the word “exterminator” printed in big, bold capital letters, Maribel Oliveras said she cleared city roads of rat-infested rubbish for more than 15 years.

After a sweep of pest-control layoffs in May, Oliveras, 45, of the Bronx, was out of a job.

But she said the cuts affected more than just city workers. Now, there are even more fat, beady-eyed rodents in New York City neighborhoods.

City Council members, state representatives and DC 37 union leaders of locals 768 and 1549 held a press conference yesterday in Jackson Heights, Queens, calling upon City Hall to rehire workers, clean up the streets and drive out the vermin.

Councilman Daniel Dromm (D-Jackson Heights) says the increase in rats is due to job cuts in May, when city officials slashed 75 percent of pest-control positions across all five boroughs.

The layoffs, carried out by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, left just eight exterminators to cover all of Queens.

“I smell a rat,” state Sen. José Peralta (D-Jackson Heights) said. “The city had the opportunity to do the right thing, but instead they chose not to get rid of the rats, but to get rid of the workers.”

Zoe Tobin, a DHMH spokesman, said the department has taken newer, more effective measures to resolve the problem, including funding efforts to stamp out pests in city parks and launching the Bronx Rat Indexing Pilot Project.

But local 768 President Fitz Reid, who represents health service employees, said such interactive, online methods are no match for people.

“You need a human being to identify the problem, to determine the appropriate solution for the area, and then to go out and clean up the garbage,” Reid said.

While Tobin said the department provides extermination services to home and small-business owners, Reid pointed out that property owners — not the city — pick up the tab.

Yet Kathryn Daniels, 55, a Jackson Heights resident for more than 20 years, considers the issue neither here nor there. Like some, she has not seen rats roaming the neighborhood.

“If there was a problem around me, I’d think people in my building would be talking,” she said. “Maybe it’s just that people don’t know.”

Local 768 treasurer Caroline Hilton, an exterminator for 26 years, said most residents are not as fortunate.

“We get hundreds of calls each day through 311, but we can only help a few,” Hilton said, referencing the city’s number for non-emergency services. “It’s not a good feeling when you have to put people off. With so few of us, we can no longer compete with the garbage.”